True to its name, the Icebreaker Triathlon was cold. I was ill prepared for how cold it was to come out of the pool, soaking wet, and get on my bike and ride fast in the wind. It wasn’t actually windy, but it was still cold. I had a really hard time breathing the cold air and at one point I noticed my arms and legs had turned completely red. But it sure was fun.

I am definitely rusty when it comes to knowing what to do for these things. I started things off by trying to check-in without my ID. Luckily, Charmaine had reminded me to bring it, so I only had to make an extra trip to the car. Then I went to start warming up in the pool and realized I was the only one without a timing chip. Woops. So I went back to the check-in station and picked up my timing chip… and noticed that I was the only one without body marking, so I fixed that as well.

I was surprised how few people did a warm-up swim. I swam about 600 meters, and I think it really helped my race. I wish I had been more aggressive in my self-seed time, because I had to swim past lots of people. I guess that makes me a sand-bagger, though that wasn’t my intention. The swim went really fast. I was able to swim pretty hard most the time, but I did catch up to a few roadblocks of 5 or more people that were harder to get by. Usually I had to wait till the group broke up organically when they came to the end of the pool, then I could swim alongside and past them.

I think my swim-to-bike transition may have been longer than my actual swim. I should probably work on my transitions someday. The cold definitely added to my slowness, plus I was really breathing hard after swimming hard then running from the pool out to the transition area. I took several minutes putting on my helmet, gloves, socks, and shoes.

Once I was on the street riding, I realized how cold it was. I went pretty slowly up the first two hills, but then I really started pushing. Nobody passed me from the top of the second hill till I got back to the bottom and started the loop again. The second time around was much like the first. I was really slow going up the two hills, but then I went really fast. I haven’t seen the official numbers yet, but I’m feeling pretty good about my swim and bike times.

Running, which is always the worst part of my race, continued to be terrible. I’m really disappointed with my run today. I walked almost the entire way. I just couldn’t find a way to get my legs going. I was also really feeling sore in my shoulders and pecs from the sculling on Thursday. I’m a bit surprised how much I let that affect my run. And I was still really cold.